John Lewis and the Durability of Transcendent Race Politics

John Lewis's civil rights activism in the 1960s often obscures the fact that he won elective office as a racially moderate politician. Scholars have long noted the efficacy of using deracialized, or racially transcendent, campaign strategies to get elected, despite normative concerns. These strategies were critical to electing Black governors, senators, and even President Obama. However, in the age of Black Lives Matter, some have questioned the continued usefulness of the strategy. Using Rep. Lewis's life as a guide, I examine the ways that some Black politicians continue to use deracialization, even in this racially charged social and political moment, and I explain how younger cohorts of Black politicians challenge this approach. Ultimately, I argue that while deracialization is a contested strategy, its efficacy has not diminished. Rather, Black politicians have expanded the boundaries of what constitutes racially transcendent politics to include consensus issues like voting rights, which while highly racialized, are not likely to induce an erosion of support among non-Black Democratic voters.

Celebrities in US Politics

The technological innovations during the 20th and 21st centuries that brought us radio, television, movies, the internet, and social media have created a class of people, celebrities, who, at first glance, wield enormous influence in our society—from setting fashion trends and hairstyles to advancing social movements and political causes. Donald Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, and Ronald Reagan rode their celebrity to elective office. Other celebrities are increasingly using their status to influence politics by endorsing candidates for office and pushing for change in domestic and foreign policy. This essay focuses on the scholarship on the effect of celebrities in American politics. The study of celebrities in American politics is a largely interdisciplinary enterprise, with contributions from political science, sociology, marketing, history, cultural studies, mass communication, and communication studies. The literature on celebrities, and, more specifically, celebrities in American politics, has branched off into five key areas – (1) Celebrity Endorsements, (2) Celebrities and American Government Institutions, (3) Celebrity Politics and Celebrity Culture, and (4) Celebrities and the Environment.

‘Sacrifical lambs’ or candidate mimicking? Gender-based nomination strategies in elections

This paper explores an alternative mechanism for understanding the drivers of the nomination of women for elective office in single-member electoral systems. Previous research has generally examined two sources of gender-based politics: party ideology, with leftist parties being more female-friendly than rightist parties, and the strategic nomination of candidates depending on whether the party is expected to win or lose in the district, with women more likely to be used as ‘sacrificial lambs’ in hopeless contests. We argue that the nomination of male and female candidates across districts reflects an interdependence of party strategies – in particular, the actions of the main opposition party. We hypothesise that when the trailing party is not committed to gender equality, its equilibrium strategy in a given district is the nomination of a candidate of the same gender as that of the front-running party. Secondary data from 1,017 single-member Australian districts and more than 2,000 candidates from 2001–2019 confirm our hypothesis.

Constitutional Disqualification: A Critique of English and English-Derived Law

Many modern constitutional systems, despite the prevalence of adult suffrage, forbid certain classes of person from participation in the most important aspects of the democratic process, whether by withholding the vote from them or by denying them the right to hold office. While the former has received a considerable amount of attention in the literature, the latter has been comparatively neglected. The aim of the article is to redress this imbalance. It starts by offering, quite generally, a taxonomy of such bans. It then appraises, with particular reference to the constitutions of the English-speaking world, some of the most common grounds for disqualifying persons from holding elective office and the various purposes that these might be thought to serve. A major theme is the question whether some grounds of disqualification, notwithstanding their long history, can be justified.

Anti-abortion Policymaking and Women’s Representation

To what extent and under what conditions do women in elective office lead the way on conservative women’s interests? The few existing studies find that, contrary to most research on women’s descriptive and substantive representation, legislative activity on conservative women’s issues in the United States is driven primarily by Republican men. This article takes a new look at the heart of conservative policymaking by analyzing the sponsorship of anti-abortion bills in twenty-one state houses, from 1997 to 2012. We find that conservative Republican women stand at the forefront of anti-abortion policy leadership in state legislatures. However, their distinctive leadership is highly constrained; it is most likely to emerge in policy contexts that use women-centered issue frames and within competitive partisan environments. These complex interactions between gender, ideology, issue framing, and partisanship call for new theories and concepts of women’s representation as not only gendered, but also deeply embedded in the strategic interplay of polarized, partisan politics.

Women's Underrepresentation in the U.S. Congress

Women's elective office-holding stands at an all-time high in the United States. Yet women are far from parity. This underrepresentation is surprising given that more women than men vote. Gender–as a feature of both society and politics–has always worked alongside race to determine which groups possess the formal and informal resources and opportunities critical for winning elective office. But how gender connects to office-holding is not fixed; instead, women's access to office has been shaped by changes in law, policy, and social roles, as well as the activities and strategies of social movement actors, political parties, and organizations. In the contemporary period, data from the Center for American Women and Politics reveal that while women are a growing share of Democratic officeholders, they are a declining share of Republican officeholders. Thus, in an era of heightened partisan polarization, women's situation as candidates increasingly depends on party.

Legislating at the Intersections: Race, Gender, and Representation

Record numbers of women, and in particular women of color, are gaining elective office across the country. This article explores how their presence in legislative bodies might make a difference in policy agendas and legislative advocacy, especially at the intersections of race and gender. Leveraging original datasets of Democratic lawmakers and the bills they sponsor in fifteen U.S. state houses in 1997 and 2005, we examine multiple forms of race–gender policy leadership and how it is tied to legislators’ race–gender identity. Testing theories of intersectional representation, we find that women of color often are the most likely race–gender policy leaders. Indeed, our measures of race–gender policy leadership reveal the distinctive representational work of women of color, which traditional, single-axis measures of legislative activity on behalf of women or racial/ethnic minorities cannot.

Why Run? Party Leadership Ambitions in the House of Representatives

Drawing upon interviews with current and former members of Congress and congressional staff, plus existing research on political ambition, this chapter offers some tentative answers to the question of why certain lawmakers decide to be candidates for a party leadership post. Following the lead of political scientist Jennifer Lawless, it frames the discussion in terms of two kinds of ambition: nascent ambition, or the general “interest in seeking elective office,” and expressive ambition, “the act of entering a specific race at a particular time”. It shows that these two kinds of ambition ultimately determine who among all of its members leads the House, as well as the degree of stability and conflict that exists within both political parties.

Addressing Supply-Side Hurdles to Gender-Equal Representation in Germany

One hundred years after being granted the right to active suffrage, German women remain underrepresented in elective office. Quotas have partially addressed demand-side barriers to gender parity in descriptive representation, but significant supply-side gaps remain. Men comprise over 70% of political party members in the Federal Republic, dominating the bodies that provide candidates for elective office. Solutions to this supply-side problem have often focused on “fixing” women to fit into gendered party institutions, rather than altering these structures to be more welcoming to women. In contrast, drawing on interviews with (potential) party members in Germany, this article identifies informal institutions that deter gender-balanced involvement in political parties and suggests ways in which these norms might be changed.